


no rain checks

by SharpsBox (Sampphic)



Category: Battle For Dream Island (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Domestic, Fluff, Humor, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, One Shot, Rain, Swearing, Team Dynamics, post-BFB 10, pre-split BFB, references to BFDI(A)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:08:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26923366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sampphic/pseuds/SharpsBox
Summary: It's raining tonight, as expected.
Relationships: Balloony/Cloudy
Kudos: 10





	no rain checks

**Author's Note:**

> *cries in the otherwise barren Balloony/Cloudy tag, which was only created because of this work*
> 
> welcome to my second BFB fic, even though nobody asked! yawn, it's more boring slice of life. just Sam's usual work, no more or less.
> 
> no coherent thoughts, just Balloudy. I adore this ship, and frankly I'm surprised not to see any older content of this ship here. balloony was doomed to go first on a team full of fan favorites hhhh  
> I feel I'm the one kid who doesn't do much but lurk, toss kudos and occasionally submit mediocre oneshots that people give kudos out of pity? okay, I shouldn't tear myself down so much but haha self deprecation go brrr
> 
> for the time this work spends on the first page, the council shall decide its fate. please don't hurt me, I'm just trying to vibe and write gay literature of an object show.
> 
> to clear up any confusion, here's every name change for this humanised AU:  
> Balloony - Bill  
> Cloudy - Claude  
> Coiny - Cole  
> Firey - Flint  
> Gelatin - Gille  
> Leafy - Leah  
> Match - Marge  
> Needle - Nora  
> Nickel - Nico  
> Pin - Pia  
> Roboty - Robert  
> Snowball - Simmons  
> Tennis Ball - Tenney
> 
> HC time: Balloony and Cloudy met in the Locker of Losers. in this fic, Bill and Claude use each other's object names as terms of endearment. I also headcanon Cloudy and by extension, Claude as trans, but it's not front and center of this work.
> 
> with all of that out of the window, here you go.

“Hey Balloony, I’m back from collecting!”

Claude pushes in the door to BEEP’s team residence, kicking off his clunky boots and hanging his hat on a wall hook. Before he can take another step, Bill greets him with an affectionate smile and a quick smooch on the forehead.

“Welcome home, Cloudy!”

He reaches up to peck him back, ruffling his green hair as they both chuckle. Passing through the living room he notices their other three teammates with pencils out, furiously etching the time away.

“Good day, Rocky!”

A quiet boy with ruffled gray hair nods and scribbles on more paper, before holding it up for him to see. It says in distinguished lettering, “Nice to see you, too!”

Hands fidgeting in his pockets, Claude shuffles through a dimly lit hall. He passes tenant notices, taped drawings in pen and glossy Polaroids of them all grinning into the camera, oblivious to the oddities of this dragged-out game. There they are, a ragtag team bound by strengths, shortcomings, failure and victory.

_Come to think of it, none of us have heard from Robert or David since their elimination - they sure as hell haven’t gone ‘home’ as Four claims, not when they’ve vanished into an intangible dimension. What I do have, though, is my boyfriend’s scared-shitless expression, and his ramblings of… an inescapable academy? Wherever that is, it’s suspicious how Four was so quick to shut him the hell up._

Of course, a girl with distinct fern-tinged hair remains front and center in the first few photos.

_Right - we had an eighth teammate._

To this day, Leah’s name remains unmentioned - their former team leader, a people-pleaser to a fault, she who few of them remain on amicable terms with.

The room door clicks shut and he flops into the bed, drenched in sweat from burning sunlight and afternoon humidity. Grabbing his binder he folds, untucks, shifts, pulls it over his head, before stretching his arms and coughing. He takes several deep breaths, throwing on a fresh shirt with print on its front: “And with the jock of all people!”

_Here we are._

Looking around his and Bill’s room, it’s scattered with indefinitely growing collections. He sorts through them, stringing together each place, time, day he found them, each difference distinguishing every piece.

From his palm he drops a few buttons into the narrow neck of a tinted vase, adding them to others in a spectrum of colors and materials. Stacks of cassettes lie next to them, coordinated by era and edition. Shirts, shorts and scarves slump in a corner of the room, with a few ludicrous designs jokingly gifted by friends. A brass pocket watch ticks steadily, with delicate hands pinpointing the time. Ballpoint pens in infinite hues of ink litter a desk. On its matte surface, stones of varying patterns and shapes prop up two minuscule flags - one of vibrant rainbow, the other of pale blue, pink and white. One faded, sea-green balloon bobs about its string, tied into the cracked keyhole of a pebble. Books pile up to the side, temporary escapes from the confines of a dilapidated trailer.

Above a globe and chipped pair of dark glasses lies the simple centerpiece of his collection. One drawing adorns the wall, illustrating an emerald-haired young man, arms around another man with ivory locks. He hums an ever-present tune and dusts the glassy surface of its frame, eyes fixed on Woody’s name written in a corner.

Returning to the living room, he and Nico watch as Rocky continues to sketch an incident into pictures. Woody sits sprawled by his side, adding in small details whilst narrating bizarre past occurrences to their seniors.

“To this day, I just don’t get how Tenney, Marge or Simmons stayed calm. All while a freakin’ UFO snatched us up!”

Claude scratches his chin in contemplation, simultaneously puzzled and amused.

“Huh, didn’t know so much happened when Bill and I got stuck in the Locker of Losers. I guess the strangest things happen when we’re not around to witness them…”

Picking up a pen, Rocky scribbles a note and shoves it to Claude for him to answer. “How’d you and Bill not go up the wall, being shut in with nobody you know?”

Their friend interjects, “Tell me about it - when Cole got eliminated I had to watch every step, all while squeezing through dozens of miffed, would-be contestants. As Flint would say, strangers these days are just so… strange!”

“Not in a million years would I go back again. My one saving grace was collecting all sorts of things, to pretend there was still variety in my life. Considering we were all in a cramped metal box, that didn’t win anyone else’s favor.”

“Wait Claude, that pile of everything has been around for years? How’d you sneak out and grab all that?”

“Bill routinely snuck us out, so we wouldn’t lose touch with the world. How, exactly? He’s busy making dinner though, you can ask him later.”

No sooner when he speaks than his partner’s voice calls out from the kitchen, accompanied by the unmistakable smell of cooking. It soothes him, refocusing his senses and diffusing through clamorous, ambient consciousness.

“Cloud, could you lend me an extra hand?”

“One moment, Balloon!”

The five of them sit at an engraved table, listening to more anecdotes as they dig into their food. “We got no further than the fifth challenge, but everything fell out of left field before it even began. First of all, of all the things to use for Cake at Stake, they fucking used Do-“

Woody gestures towards his teammates and interrupts, “Please, we’re eating”, prompting brief laughter from all five of them. The silver-haired teen cuts off his sentence, continuing, “When Gille got his piece, he made this creepy-ass face. Although I don’t have a sleep paralysis demon like Flint, I’d imagine mine to be similar in theory.” 

“How creepy are we talking about here?”

Nico twists his face into an unnerving leer, making his best imitation, “Do I not look HAPPY to you?”

Ignoring the unsettled winces on some of their faces, he elaborates, “That’s just the beginning of everything. On our way to Yoyle Mountain, we, the ever-victorious people of Wheel Ooze a Whole Bunch got lost in the Evil Forest.”

A few horrified gasps break out at the dining table. They gape at their teammate, wedged between morbid curiosity and concern.

“Excuse me, did you say the EVIL FOREST?”

“Yep, Bill. We got stuck in the middle of jack shit nowhere, probably out in the open for I don’t know, some demon to come and possess us. I digress though, someone, probably a no-namer knocked us out. When I came to my senses, not only was I lying next to Cole of all people, but this ridiculously heavy bag of money was mysteriously slumped next to us, Pia swore up and down no strange shit happened when we were conked out. Seems legit?”

Near-indifferently, his team shrugs. No strange occurrences lay beyond the realm of possibility - digging up a jar of poison, the world nearly collapsing before their eyes, Four vanishing, only for their thousand-yard glare to ominously return… they know well by now that anything and everything is probable, no matter how seemingly outlandish.

“Cole seems okay, aside from the time he shattered my damn window. He and Flint, those idiots whose slapping and bickering I sat through when it was my turn at the stolen TV. What is it with you and Cole, though?”

“None of us know, but whatever it is, Nora piped down about it. Several years later, nobody knows why the hell thousands of Goiks were sitting there, up for grabs in the middle of that demonic forest.”

Eyebrows raise and vacant stares bore into each other. An uncomfortable hush falls over the common room, as their casual conversation grinds to an awkward halt. They eat and exchange befuddled glances, sitting quietly save for the clink of cutlery.

Only when everyone’s plates are empty and they’re full, does Woody pierce the cold silence.

“Dishes?”

“Yep, it’s our turn tonight.”

Bill and Rocky get up, parting ways to their respective rooms. Peering through the window and picking up on the rhythmic pitter-patter of rain, Claude leaves the table shortly after, making his way to the weather-drenched yard.

“Rainy night out there, Cloud?”

“It’s drizzling outside, alright.”

“Come back in a while though, okay? I don’t want you catching anything other than rainwater.”

With that, the door swings shut behind him.

In conclusion to a day, the rain rinses out his cluttered mind. Misty air envelops him, clouds engulf the sky in condensation, down to the musky smell of damp earth - wet weather roots him in the present, tugging him away from a tangled state of the world. Faint moonlight peeks out from behind a blanket of gray, mirroring the mundane future.

_What is to come of this game, anyway?_

The glass jar in his hand gradually fills with downpour, drop after drop hitting its interior with muted tapping. Just him and the murky night, soaking in moisture and memories. Same as all the damp nights spent in the Locker of Losers, drowning out the commotion within his surroundings and himself.

“Mind if I join you out here?”

He turns around to see his lover once more, clutching a small umbrella in one hand and reaching out with the other. 

“Be my guest.”

Bill pulls him into an embrace in response, hands on his boyfriend’s shoulders and Claude’s arms around his waist. Beaming back his partner leans in, head resting in the crook of his neck.

“Collecting rain just like before we met, eh?”

Rubbing against his lanky partner’s shoulders, Claude replies quietly, “Yep, except I’m not stuck in a miserable box of a hovel this time.”

Beyond the narrow edges of the roof, rain shrouds the world around them in downpour. Drops dart downwards, merging into drops before trickling down their umbrella and returning to the ground.

“Well, they knew you as the kid who only came out to collect rain when the clouds were gray. Can’t blame you though, I’d rather sit through a muggy day than slog through some hundred degrees in the sun.”

At his low points, before he could quell the tumult within him, he could always rely on the rain.

“I don’t get why rain saddens people - if anything, it comforts me more than the damn sun. Speaking of nicknames, I recall - to pass the time in that poky old trailer, you’d grab a pump, inflate dozens of balloons and grab them from the ceiling before the next day. Right, Balloony?”

Counting and retrieving them posed no more than a menial task, but at least it distracted them from the surrounding mess of screams and squabbling.

“Yes, but the sheer amount angered the Announcer without fail, every week. Fun times.”

“Sometimes though, a balloon would pop and we’d make fun of each other’s pitchy voices.”

Within the monotony of Locker life, their everyday mishaps built an outlook of normalcy. Hearing Bill hit his head on the ceiling and yell, “SHIT!”, Claude snapping a rusty blade off the fan or both reveling in shrill laughter when a balloon burst in their faces - everything, anything else was preferable to trudging back and forth from rigid routine to routine.

“Damn, as close as the Locker was to falling apart, at least something good came of being stuck in there. To be specific, running into you.”

“Same to you. Wanna know what more I collected in there, though?”

“What, cobwebs and noise complaints?”

With the evening pouring over them, they lean closer into each other’s touch. Bill gazes downwards, face-to-face with Claude as he strokes his cheek.

“Not everything stayed in my collection for long. It was trodden upon, soaked during storms, fused together on hot days, or swallowed into the cracks. Despite everything, a few things still hung on.”

_Which things, exactly?_

“You mean, that leaky helium canister which Dora somehow nicked from storage?”

“Nope, someone took it for themselves. Probably to huff some.”

“An annotated copy of ‘How to be so Very Dumb?’”

“Come on… it was good for squashing bugs, though.”

“Dang, I haven’t a clue-”

His brain short-circuits in the blink of an eye, letting out a surprised squeak as Claude presses their faces together in a kiss.

_Ah, these happy little irregularities of life._

Face flushed, when they pull apart he responds, “Oh! Wait, you mean our memories together?”

Flustered, Claude only nods sheepishly in wordless reply. Bill lovingly laughs back and they peck again, heads swimming with elation. For a while more they clutch each other in the diminishing drizzle, hands locked and the night clinging to their skin. Droplets of condensation bead their heads, matching a soft shine that flickers within their eyes.

“Uhh… Balloony, you don’t mind that your hair’s drenched?”

“Nah. What’s a little water, compared to spending time with you, Cloudy?”

Casting their umbrella aside, the pair leave wet weather and wishes to wash over them.

Leaning into Bill’s ear as if spilling a sacred secret, Claude whispers, “I only have so much time to collect what I truly want. Is it too much to ask? I’d love to collect memories with you.”

They nuzzle faces, for they hope to stay grounded in this night, indefinitely veiled in evening showers and listening to their thrumming hearts.

“I’ll collect this one with you, too.”


End file.
